


Turning Point

by Unsentimentalf



Series: The Sherlock/John/Moriarty series [5]
Category: Sherlock BBC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-26
Updated: 2011-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:25:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> What's the last thing that you remember?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Point

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be Collateral pt 2 but it claimed a definite identity, and title, of its own.
> 
> I don't use archive warnings but please note that this is very dark.

The feel of John's head throbbing when he woke distracted him from everything else except the dryness of his mouth. Water; he groped for the glass at the bedside without opening his eyes. His fingers bruised themselves against bare wood and the message that something other than himself was wrong here finally reached his aching brain.

Bright sunlight through a window in the wrong wall; a room that he didn't remember. He pulled himself up to sit and nausea wracked him. All bad.

It was a huge bedroom, with a low timbered ceiling, solid furniture, nautical scenes on the walls and flowers in a vase on the windowsill. His back was against an ornate wooden headboard and his legs covered with fine cream sheets and a dark blue eiderdown.

Not a hotel. Not, he imagined, anyone's bedroom; the surfaces were bare. If this was the guest room, the rest of the house was likely to be impressive. He was getting the feeling that he'd done this before.

He couldn't remember past his aching head; where he was, how he had got here. The bedside table, taller than the one at home, held a jug of water and a glass. He sipped the liquid suspiciously but it tasted only of water and his nausea slowly subsided.

He was wearing a pair of the shorts that he usually slept in. The chair by the dressing table held a pile of folded clothes that looked from the distance across the bedroom floor remarkably like his own, and something- maybe a laptop- resting on top of them. He couldn't remember what he had been wearing, or when. Why couldn't he remember?

Concussion. The state of his head, the nausea, the amnesia. John put the glass down, reached up with both hands to check his scalp for sore points, and pain shot through the wrong shoulder. He finished poking under his hair with his left hand, finding nothing, then reached back carefully over his right shoulder.

Two inches or so square of gauze padding, neatly fastened down with medical tape. When he prodded at the area underneath it hurt so he stopped. He'd been injured and patched up. Not, he thought, a bullet wound this time; his shoulder worked, he didn't think there was deep muscle damage. A burn, maybe, or an abrasion.

What else had happened? John climbed out of bed, slowly, his head protesting the movement. A full length mirror stood beside the dressing table; he examined his mostly naked body critically.

A wide bruise was darkening on his left hip. There was a deep scratch across the back of one hand, a minor graze on the palm of the other. His eyes were slightly bloodshot and the nausea came in waves. Otherwise, nothing.

From here he could see through the Georgian window; one floor up, looking over a long, high walled garden laid to lawn and neat borders. Over the far wall he could see the cream stucco of the tall houses beyond. Still in London, he guessed, but that part of London with a great deal of money at its disposal.

The item on top of what were definitely John's clothes was an iPad. As he picked it up the screen brightened to white, with Play in the centre. He couldn't think of a good reason why not, so he did.

"Johnny boy." John found that he'd dropped the device back on the chair, backed up a step, heartbeat racing. Fuck. Moriarty's round face was smiling from the screen, shoulders bare. John couldn't see much past him; brick wall and fluorescent light.

"Sherlock thought we ought to say goodbye. He's a little sentimental, still." Moriarty looked as if he had everything he always wanted. John felt ice cold. Goodbye?

"I would do it in person but," Jim glanced aside, then back, smile widening, "you passed out a few minutes ago. Not to worry though; we were done."

He spoke louder. "Was that everything?" John couldn't make out another voice in the pause, but Moriarty continued as if he heard one.

"Of course. I'm sorry. Nearly forgot." His smile flicked off, then on again. "Sherlock says run." And the screen went blank.

Run.

The window would open; the high garden walls weren't promising but there was no-one visible. John pulled clothes on fast, hesitated between jug and iPad and chose the latter for hard corners. He was trying to figure out the window catch when there was a knock at the door and it opened.

John had already raised the tablet defensively when he registered the identity of the man in the doorway. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Where's Sherlock?"

"That," Mycroft said, frowning at him, "is what I was intending to ask you. Do come downstairs, Doctor Watson. Tea is on its way."

They had found him, apparently, unconscious in an empty house. Mycroft wouldn't be drawn further. "It would be better if you remembered." He did say that the iPad had been found in the room; he had left it with John in the hope that it would assist in recollection.

Sherlock was missing, and Mycroft's obvious concern was doing nothing to prevent the worry engulfing John. Had Sherlock been there, when Moriarty made that recording? Had that last message really been from him?

"What's the last thing that you remember?" Mycroft's questioning was persistent.

It didn't work like that. He had nothing to orientate himself by, just confusion. Eventually Mycroft reluctantly provided something.

"Yesterday morning you attended Richard Telling's funeral. Do you remember that?"

Was that yesterday? God yes, he remembered that.

"Tell me what you were doing there."

The pause lengthened. John finished drinking his tea, took a biscuit. His head still hurt. They'd spent hours that morning tracking up and down London, making sure Mycroft had lost their trail.

"Very well. Tell me what happened."

The tiny church had been full; all Richard's work colleagues had turned out; row upon row of men in dark suits. The eulogy had been delivered in sombre tones by his employer. "Richard's death," he had concluded "will not soon be forgotten." Jim Moriarty hadn't glanced once at John, or at Sherlock.

Thye'd tried- he'd tried- to get away, after the family had filed out with the coffin for the trip to the crematorium. That's where he'd obtained the bruise, hitting the pew as he fell, the graze on his hand. "The rules, " Moriarty had informed him, still in his serious funeral voice, "have changed. That's what happens when you break them, John."

Mycroft was waiting. John shrugged. "We were abducted." 'Again" hung, unspoken.

"Then?"

Then what? There was the back of a van, Sherlock quiet but his eyes darting. They'd arrived somewhere...nothing. Nothing he could describe. "I don't know." A direct appeal to Mycroft. "Why can't I remember?"

"Do you remember anything? Anything at all about Sherlock leaving?"

"No." The nausea was back. "I don't have answers to your bloody questions. What about answers to mine? How did you find me? Where? When?"

Mycroft exhaled gently, placed his tea cup back on its saucer.

"I find the message left for you by Jim Moriarty deeply disturbing. My overriding concern is in finding out where my brother went and why."

He tipped the teapot, added milk.

"You made a decision, Doctor Watson, to be part of Sherlock's activities. You were warned, repeatedly. You chose to ignore those warnings and you are still choosing to keep information from me, despite the fact that it must be clear to you by now that Sherlock is very far from infallible."

The teaspoon stirred in a spoonful of sugar, then a second.

"I have not rescued you. You are not here so that I can assist you in your recovery. You are here so that I can establish why Sherlock has disappeared. If I provide you with information about what happened yesterday then you will tell me absolutely everything that you recall, however trivial, however unpleasant."

He was waiting for John's assent.

There seemed little to lose; John remembered nothing anyway, past the van. "Agreed."

Mycroft stood up to retrieve a pile of papers from his desk.

"It took longer than it should have done to identify your visitor. When a name was obtained, a link was found to your landlandy and the officer concerned concluded that Mrs Telling's visit to Baker Street was of no relevance." His tone was mildly disapproving. Heads, John imagined, had rolled. His own still pounded.

"It took a review yesterday afternoon for someone rather more intelligent to wonder why Joanne Telling would be a member of a Women's Institute some twenty miles from her home. It was then that the sudden death of her son was brought to my attention. Your presence, and that of Jim Moriarty, at Richard Telling's funeral some hours previously was confirmed"

He passed John a photograph; a small warehouse under a railway arch. "James Morchase, Imports and Exports" the fading sign said.

"The registered office of Richard Telling's employer. You were found in a room at the back."

He was waiting expectantly. John sighed. "You were meant to find me, then."

"It appears so, yes. Do you recognise the place?"

It looked like a thousand other London businesses. He couldn't even guess where it might be located. "No."

"Tell me about Richard Telling, John."

Information for information. He doubted that Mycroft could do much harm with the knowledge; he could probably find it out himself anyway. John needed to know what had happened to him.

"He worked for Moriarty; he was the one who picked me up in the car I thought was yours. Stephen, he was called there."

Straight at Mycroft. He wasn't giving the man a hint of his vulnerability. "I killed him while we were getting away that night. Moriarty sent his mother to visit me; playing games. I guess Sherlock thought we'd play them better; the funeral was his idea. But he was expecting us."

Mycroft nodded, pulled out his phone and murmured a few cryptic phrases into it. John's turn again.

"What else did you find there, apart from me? Had Sherlock been there?"

"Yes." Mycroft placed his fingers together, in conscious or unconscious imitation of his brother, and watched John over them.

"Well?"

Mycroft extracted a second photograph, handed it over. Three empty hypodermic syringes on a green towel.

John pulled his sleeve up. On the inside of his elbow the puncture mark was barely visible. Not good at all. "What was it?"

"You are aware of Sherlock's recreational use of cocaine." It wasn't a question.

John stared at him, incredulous. "You think this was Sherlock's doing? Suddenly decided to do some coke with his good friend Jim? Throw a party? You think I would have joined in, with narcotics, for God's sake? Do you know your brother- either of us- at all?"

"It appears that I may know him better than you do, John." Mycroft was still watching him, hands flat on his knees. "The fingerprints on all three syringes were Sherlock's. Do you remember anything yet?"

Long fingers tight around his upper arm. The feel of the cold liquid in his vein. The frantic beating of his heart. Flashes of physical sensations, but why, how he'd felt about it, was lost. He said as much. "Cocaine wouldn't cause amnesia, or unconsciousness, not unless it was a huge dose." He didn't feel ill enough for that; hungover more than anything else. "Was it alcohol as well?"

"Residue in two of the syringes contained a relatively low concentration of cocaine. The third also contained flunitrazepam."

John was momentarily grateful that Mycroft was not an ally. It gave him someone to be furiously angry with. Not the right person, but he'd do. "You knew that and you still think this was Sherlock's doing?"

Mycroft sighed. "The syringes were not labelled in any way. The drug is tasteless in solution and would have been undetectable. It is possible that Sherlock was not aware of the contents."

"You think he'd have just injected whatever Moriarty gave him into me? Moriarty, for God's sake!"

"Trust has hardly been an issue so far, has it?" Mycroft's tone was dry.

Three seeming-identical syringes; he'd have tried one on Moriarty first. Trust, whatever Mycroft thought, was very much an issue. Was it merely chance that John had ended up with the Rohypnol? He suspected not. Hell, he wished he knew whether Sherlock was letting Jim seem to run rings around him, or whether the criminal was really three steps ahead.

He'd been given a date-rape drug. John felt tired and sick. It hadn't stopped there, not from Moriarty's message. But Sherlock must have known that he was sedated. Except there was the cocaine; probably affecting Sherlock's judgement, doubtless masking the sedative in John's system, at least for a short while. A short while might have been enough.

"Is there more?"

"Yes."

John stood up, walked around the low table to look out of the study's french windows at the garden beyond. "I'd like some fresh air."

"Of course." Mycroft unlocked the doors. "I'll have some lunch set out next door in the next quarter of an hour. We'll talk again after that. If you remember anything important beforehand, send word."

The walk wasn't long enough, however slowly he took it. All the way to the far wall, back again, his trainers leaving marks in the short grass, his shoulder aching. It must have rained last night; the night he'd missed, unconscious in Mycroft's guest room. Had Sherlock slept, after the cocaine wore off, or was he pacing somewhere, trapped?

Anthea, or whatever her name was, was almost a remembrance of normality, waiting for him at the open door. Her smile was as quick and vague as ever. John wondered if she knew what had happened to him, what she thought. He could guess the latter. Nothing said macho and desirable quite like being the drugged victim of sexual assault.

He had more serious things to worry about than the opinion of a woman he'd failed to flirt with a couple of times, but the trivial things were easier.

"Nice place you've got here."

"Yes." She looked amused. Amused was good; amused wasn't pitying or sympathetic, or whatever Mycroft had been. Calculating. If he hadn't thought that John was of some use, he would have dumped him at hospital or at home and left him there. That might have been preferable.

Self pity was unattractive. There were other reactions, like anger, like determination. He'd told Sherlock he was done with games and he'd meant it. No-one screwed around with him like this. Certainly not Jim Moriarty. And not, a quiet, insistent voice added, Sherlock Holmes, though it was going to take more than a few fingerprints to convince him that Sherlock had any part in this.

"Are you joining me for lunch?"

"No thank you."

"You do eat, I hope?"

"Very seldom." Was that a joke? That smile was almost shared. Before he could think of an appropriate reply he was faced with a buffet table and Anthea was in retreat.

The walk in the garden had gone some way to clearing his head and John found he was hungry. Odd to help himself with no-one else in the room, but he settled himself on a chair with a view of the garden and set to, wondering when he'd last eaten. Yesterday's breakfast, quite possibly.

His meal was briefly interrupted by a man coming in to ask if he had everything he needed. Other than that he was left alone. Someone must have been watching, though, because as soon as he'd wiped his fingers on the luxurious napkin and started to wonder what he should do next, Mycroft appeared.

"I trust that that was adequate to your needs? Is there anything else that you would like?"

"No. Thank you." Automatic politeness; he was still angry but the meal had been very good.

"In that case may I suggest that we resume? I will have coffee brought in shortly."

John gestured reluctant assent. Get this over with. He had things to do.

The curved inside arch of the railway bridge was bare, greying brick with a fluorescent tube hanging loosely from the ceiling. There were flimsy partitions at either end, a shoddy desk up against one wall with the ragged green towel and discarded needles lying on top, and a battered swivel chair. The centre of the room was taken up by a rusting iron bedstead with two bare and stained single mattresses piled on top of it. Clothes were scattered on the floor; John's clothes, his one good suit that he'd worn to the funeral.

John turned the photos in his hands. The fine brandy and silk sheets of the Essex farmhouse had been unwholesome. This was just sordid.

"That's where I was found." Where Moriarty's message had been recorded. Where the three of them had, apparently, mainlined coke, done whatever they'd done under the drug's influence, and then two of them had left him there.

"Yes."

"I don't remember it." Surely he ought to remember something by now. Unless- the thought occured to him for the first time- he was being set up by Mycroft and none of this had happened.

Another photo; a close up of one of the legs of the bedstead, thin cord tied round it, a foot or so hanging loose. The other end had once been a loop but the cord had been severed just past the knot.

"There were marks on your wrists and ankles, gone now," Mycroft said with even less intonation than usual. "It appeared that the cord had been pulled tight but there was no indication of struggling."

He glanced at the hand holding the photo. "The cut on the back of your hand, and a similar one on the back of one ankle, suggest that the bonds were cut either carelessly or in a hurry."

John dropped the photo on the table in front of him. "What else?"

"Would you like coffee?"

"I'd like to get this done, Mycroft. If you don't mind. What else?"

"You may find," Mycroft warned, without any noticeable sign of concern, "some of the detail distressing."

Everything revealed so far and now he was warned? That did worry him. "Get on with it."

"Very well. Tests of the mattress found traces of your semen. From the distribution it would seem that you adopted the face down position after the relevant event took place."

He could feel the unwanted heat across his cheeks. "There really is no end to your snooping, is there?"

"I told you, Doctor. I intend to find Sherlock. He disappeared immediately after whatever happened in that room and I will find out every detail that I can. Sparing your blushes is not on my agenda."

Sherlock was missing, with Moriarty; every time he was reminded of that he felt cold. He'd damn well know everything that Mycroft did, whatever it cost.

"Go on, then. I won't object again."

The look he got for that was distinctly sceptical, but Mycroft continued, steady and unemotional.

"Two men had penetrative sex with you yesterday. One of them was Sherlock." A beat. "Neither of them used condoms."

He'd said that he wouldn't protest, and he didn't. He didn't curse, either. John wasn't going to trust Mycroft with any inkling of what he was going to do when he caught up with the missing men. It might well not fit with Mycroft's plans at all.

"I suppose," he said, dully, "you can't tell what I'm at risk of."

"Not for certain, no. The limited tests that could be done showed nothing of concern."

He pushed that aside for a moment.

"So that's it." That was enough. He pushed himself up and the twinge in his shoulder reminded him. He sat down again.

"What about my shoulder?"

"Your shoulder has been cut repeatedly with a surgical scalpel. The knife was lying on the floor." Mycroft extracted another photo. John frowned at the narrow marks oozing blood.

"It's a pattern. Does it mean anything?

"Yes." Mycroft waited for a while as John puzzled, then sighed, pulled a pad and pen towards himself.

"Thus." He sketched quickly, turned it round for John to see. Once he'd made out the first set of lines, it was easy to see where an additional curve and line had been added.

"The second set of cuts are shallower." Mycroft paused. "There were two sets of fingerprints on the knife."

John said nothing.

"The blood had pooled but not spread. You hadn't changed position significantly by the time you were found."

"Was I unconscious?" John asked, quietly.

"Impossible to be sure. You may well have been heavily sedated at that point; it is unlikely that you wouldn't have moved around otherwise."

He imagined that he'd been conscious. What would have been the fun of it, otherwise?

Mycroft's voice sounded, for the first time, genuinely hesitant. "It would be possible to arrange for a skin graft."

Not a minor surgery; painful and temporarily disabling. John ran his finger along the photo, the raw lines. He remembered something, now; the pain cutting sharp through the sleepiness and Sherlock's voice, terrifyingly angry. "Will it scar?"

"I am advised that permanent marks are likely to be faint. The cuts were deep but the blade was extremely sharp."

"I'll live with it." He hadn't time for hospital, drugs and the risks of graft complications.

"I'd like to go home now."

"No."

"You can't keep me here."

Mycroft smiled at him, a little, at that. "Of course I can. You will stay here until I find Sherlock."

"I've told you all I can. If I remember more, I'll call."

"Doctor Watson. The two most dangerous men in Britain have made their joint claims on you quite clear, though whether they intend to fight over you or share I have no idea. Whatever your personal preference might be, I don't intend to allow them anything that they want.

"Anthea will show you around the house. I am sure that you will be quite comfortable."

He stood up.

"One last thing. Have you any idea, any idea at all, as to what my brother thinks that he's doing?"

John remembered Sherlock telling him that his methods would be indirect. "I think he's still hunting." And still trying to keep John alive. He still believed that. Run, Sherlock had said...or Moriarty had.

"Do you?" Mycroft sounded surprised. "I have a rather different opinion, but yours is more...loyal. I strongly suggest that you consider where your loyalties should lie, after yesterday."

Not with Mycroft Holmes. John wasn't staying here a minute longer than he had to. He had every intention of tracking down both the men who'd drugged him and carved their initials into his shoulder before anyone else did. He was done with loyalties, right now. John Watson was seriously pissed off.


End file.
